Low cal way of cooking

Update hari ni khas untuk readers yang teruja tengok our low calorie food yang I tayang hari2. Like we said, we are not on a strict diet, it’s more of a lifestyle change.

We still eat normal food but I alter the ingredients to make the food lower in calories and a bit healthier. I guess the only thing yang I have stopped doing for now is deep frying (and baking cakes). Tu yang bekalan canola oil I masih berlitre2 lagi dalam store room tu! I selalu beli canola oil in a 20litre/pack which will last us a long time. And I baru aje beli bulan 11 hari tu, so sekarang that box masih penuh and rasanya mau kot bertahan untuk 1 tahun, hahaha.

Even The Other Half yang jarang makan fresh fruits, bila start healthy diet ni akan bawak bekalan fresh fruit to work hari2. Nasib baik lah Summer fruit still banyak in season so mostly hari2 I akan beli plums, pluots, apricots, nectarines, grapes, rockmelon, kiwi to fill the fruit bowl. Dia kata, tak pernah dia makan fruit sebanyak yang dia makan sekarang ni, hehehe.

Steam-frying method:

"Steam-fry" simply means sautéing without fat/oil. To do
this, I use a non stick pan or wok, sprayed sparingly with oil from a
pump sprayer, or with cooking spray.

(It depends on apa yang I masak, kadang2 I tak spray pun with oil and they still taste good.)

This is how I did the Oil-less vegetarian mee goreng:

-Heat the non stick wok over medium heat, add the chopped onions/ garlic/ ginger/ chilli paste, then add one or two tablespoons of liquid (water or stock), depending on the amount of vegetables. Do not put too much vegetables in the pan, or your vegetables will "stew" instead of “fry”.

-Cook over medium to high heat until the liquid starts to evaporate, stirring with a spatula or wooden spoon. Keep stirring until the vegetables are done to your liking, adding JUST ENOUGH liquid to keep the vegetables from sticking to the bottom of the pan.
You can stop when the veggies are soft, but not brown, or you can keep on until they brown a bit.

-(If you letak chilli paste/boh, you kena letak air banyak sikit so it has time to cook without it being hangit.)

-Once the onion/ garlic/ ginger/ chilli combo is cooked, then you can start adding other vegetables (like julienned carrots, beans, capsicum). Add some more liquid and cover the wok with a lid to steam the veges until half cooked.

-(If you want to do meat-based mee goreng, you can add diced chicken or diced beef or seafood at this stage before the vegetables. Increase the heat a bit to ‘goreng’ the meat. You dont need to add water masa masak the meat, they cook nicely on the non stick.)

-Then add the rinsed fresh noodles (I guna 500g untuk 6 orang makan). I cuma rinse the noodles in cold water sebab I tak nak dia kembang sangat. And most fresh noodles have a bit of oil in them anyway so tu yang tak perlu guna minyak untuk meng’goreng’.

-Once you’ve added the noodles, I added some kicap cair (around 2 tablespoon) and then 1 teaspoon of kicap manis and some more water to cook the noodles and the veges. Masa ni tak payah cover the wok, but you just have to keep on stirring (macam you menggoreng lah). Then I added some taugeh.

- If you letak too much kicap or tomato sauce or chilli sauce, it will increase the calorie count as well. So, just bear that in mind.

-Macam buat mee goreng basah but without too much liquid. Liquid tu just enough to lembutkan the noodles aje.

-(kalau you have added meat or tofu or what not, the calorie count will be higher lah sebab calories in meat and tofu are higher than veges.)

- Once cooked, just tambah salt and pepper according to taste.

Easy kan .

The oven-baked fish pulak, I used this recipe but I reduced the amount of soy sauce and I added a bit lof lemon juice to it and I tambah sliced fresh chilli.

And last night, I made pizza. Every Friday night for the past few weeks, I buat pizza sampai menyampah I tengok pizza tu (but still boleh telan lagi, hahaha).

Our low calorie chicken pizza version. Macam mana I boleh reduced the calories? By reducing the amount of cheese I used and substituting them with the low fat version .

For this large pizza, I cuma guna 25g of low fat cheddar cheese and guna 100g bocconcini cheese instead of mozzarella. Kalau you all tak jumpa low fat cheddar or bocconcini, you can still use normal cheddar and mozzarella.

The trick to only use a small amount of cheese and stretching it to cover 1 large pizza nicely is to use the small grater.

See, this is my grater. I used to guna the grater on the right side to grate my mozzarella and cheddar for my pizza. Jadi the cheese were grated into big slices so you need more to cover the pizza.

But now, I use the left side of the grater to grate my cheeses. The cheese yang di grated akan keluar so halus and ‘weightless’. So, when I grate 25g of cheese, nampak macam banyak sangat I dapat and dapat tabur them to cover 1 large pizza.

And I increase the amount of veges on the pizza and do thin base instead of thick base. And I grilled the skinless chicken I used in the pizza.

Kalau I masak green chicken curry pulak. I will use light coconut milk instead of the full fat version and skinless chicken fillet as well.

The lasagne yang I masak the other day, I loosely follow this recipe. But I used cottage cheese instead of ricotta and I only used 200g cottage cheese aje pun.

With lasagna, it’s the white sauce and beef mince with the fat that brings the calories up so try to reduce the amount of white sauce and cheese you use to make it.

Every little bit helps I guess .